Summary: 12/16/21 SB Meeting

• At the December 16, 2021 School board meeting, there was a musical performance from Swanson Choral Group along with Monique O’Grady’s farewell.

• The School Board heard some student and parent speakers comment on how happy they are to have Holidays such as the Jewish High Holidays off for the first time this past year.

• Board heard from 2 speakers on behalf of APE, discussing budget priorities and the need to address learning loss.

• Dr. Durán: 

  • Discussed the improvement in grades in first quarter vs last year; 

  • Presented a 10 minute video discussion how Carlin Springs is addressing learning loss with intensive reading and math intervention with manipulatives. 

  • Reiterated the importance of smaller class sizes to provide individualized instruction

• Dr. Durán announced that vendors changing for Covid testing and that free testing will happen at Kenmore during break.

• Dr. Durán also discussed the following:

  • SRO still under discussion

  • Visit from First Lady Pamela Northam

• Following Dr. Durán’s announcements, Board Member Kanninen: 

  • asked if tiered system of support in place in every school to ensure appropriate interventions provided to those in need. 

  • thanked John Mayo to keep class sizes ‘as small as they’ve been since I’ve been on the board.’ Mentioned that class sizes had to increase ‘on paper’ but that in practice they have been able to keep class sizes as low as in past years by hiring more staff.

• Jeff Brown from the United Way presented APS with an award of recognition for service.

• Board spent a portion of the meeting discussing the proposed calendar for 2022/2023 SY before voting. Discussion centered mainly around inclusion of world holidays but no mention of the reduction in total days from the minimum of 180 in previous years and adopted by neighboring districts. Discussion of ‘hours’ vs ‘days’ ensued with Member Kanninen mentioning that “full” weeks used to include half-day Wednesdays. [Note: that ended in 2016 and since then, APS has had 5 full day weeks AND 180 days up until this year.]

• Asst. Superintendent for Finance and Management Services Leslie Peterson presented the FY 2021 Closeout Report and Q4 CIP Report: 

  • Net funds available for reallocation are 62.1 M from FY 2021. Most of this savings came from school operating fund, as schools were closed for most of last year. 

  • $8M in spending for support for curriculum updates for math and reading constituted the largest one-time expenditure. Bridget Loft explained that this expenditure includes textbooks and digital resources for K-12, and resources to support the change to structured literacy for grades 3-5. Dr. Durán explained that this will save teachers time in collecting resources and therefore give them more time to be teaching and creating lesson plans rather than finding resources. 

  • Ongoing expenditures include teacher raises, and testing and surveillance expenditures. 

  • For Q4 CIP report, $330.9M of 411.8M budget for capital construction was reported.

• The holiday rapid testing schedule was again reviewed after the budget presentation.

• See our Scorecard for this meeting.